Governor signs education-funding bills

Almost one-third of the $22.4 billion in taxpayer's money that Missouri's government will spend in the fiscal year that begins Tuesday will go to educate children and adults.

John Hacker

Almost one-third of the $22.4 billion in taxpayer's money that Missouri's government will spend in the fiscal year that begins Tuesday will go to educate children and adults.

On Friday, Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt was at the Spiva Art Gallery at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin to sign the bills that appropriate the more than $6.6 billion the state will spend on schools from the elementary level to the most prestigious universities.

House Bill 2002 appropriates $5,347,136,469 for elementary and secondary education and House Bill 2003 will appropriate $1,267,151,193 to Missouri colleges and universities.

State Sen. Gary Nodler, who introduced Blunt at the ceremony, spoke of the signing as a "celebratory occasion as we continue the commitment to the restoration of higher education funding to historically high levels in our state."

"That coupled with increases for elementary and secondary education through the new foundation formula . . . has really represented a historic commitment, replacing education in its proper constitutional position as the first priority of our state government," Nodler said.

Blunt spoke about the investment in education as something that "just made sense."

"When I took office, I really wanted to build a more prosperous Missouri through lawsuit reform, regulatory improvements, and those things have worked," Blunt said. "Missouri has responded to these pro-jobs, pro-growth initiatives. We've gone from losing 34,000 jobs in the previous four years to creating more than 80,000 jobs in just the past three and a half, but long-term prosperity demands a commitment to education and that's why we've made education our highest priority."

Blunt said in the past, education has not received the highest priority attention, despite the mandate from the Missouri Constitution that education be one of the top priorities of state government.

"I think sometimes in the past, once the budget was put together, whatever was left over went to education," Blunt said. "Sometimes that wasn't very much, sometimes that demanded cuts in education resources. We've changed that. We based the state's budget around education, education was the central building block for the budget and that's allowed significant increases in funding for education."

Blunt touted some of the highlights of this year's budget, including:

• A $121.3 million increase to continue full funding of the foundation formula for distributing state money to school districts.

• A $3.5 million increase for the A-Plus Schools program.

• An increase of $2.9 million to educate severely disables students.

• $43 million more for Missouri's colleges and universities.

• $23.7 million more for the Access Missouri financial assistance program for needs-based scholarships.